The silver lining as another high street shop closes (and other top business news from Dorset and Hampshire)

Could the loss of some well-loved retailers actually be a sign of a high street recovery?

We broke the news this week that New Look in Bournemouth town centre is to close after 21 years.

It's terrible news for the store's staff and customers. But as we touched on in this article about the future of the town centre, there could be a positive side.

When it pushed through a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) with its creditors in 2020, New Look gave landlords new opportunities to use break clauses if they could find a more profitable tenant. And though we don't know who will move in, it seems that is what the landlord here has done.

Could it be that more retailers who instigated CVAs will see branches close as things pick up?

Other top stories this week

• Also broken by the Daily Echo Bournemouth: An entrepreneur plans to spend ￡8.7m transforming two Poole seafront sites into a Rockwater Village modelled on his existing Rockwater site in Hove. A follow-up by my colleague Ben Williets showed what it might look like.
• Go out now. That was the message from Dorset's hospitality industry, which says the sector is "running on fumes" because of the Omicron crisis. (Report by Nicole Baddeley.)
• There have been similar calls in Hampshire for people to support local businesses after the worst January many of them have seen. (Report by Timothy Edgley and Shivalika Puri.)
• The collapsed payday lender PiggyBank had more than 387,000 customers who could be entitled to make redress claims, an update from administrators revealed,
• A rapidly-growing online platform which was set up as an alternative to Amazon Marketplace is moving into a new town centre HQ.
• Southampton employer BAT has introduced virtual tours of the labs where research takes place into alternatives to tobacco.
• Spider-Man came to the aid of the cinema industry last month, with the latest Marvel film boosting attendances for Cineworld.
• Businesses have been urged to watch for the signs of finanical distress after insolvencies rose substantially compared with pre-pandemic figures.
• Proposals have been submitted to government for a ￡21.7m transformation of Boscombe. (Story by Jason Lewis.)
• Diana Parkes, whose business is all about helping women achieve success, however they define it, with strategies backed up by extensive research, has a new book out, Understand Dare Thrive.
• Bournemouth Airport is recruiting again, with 75 jobs open.
• And Hampshire Chamber is strengthening its team with the appointment of three new directors including the Daily Echo and LOCALiQ's own sales director, Laura Bielinski.

Someone else's content

I like to recommend the wise or entertaining words of business people in Hampshire and Dorset when I spot them.

Here's a great post by Richard Coope, founder of Brightful and Winchester creatives, on the value of properly listening.

Richard's post reminded me of a remark by Tom Peters (whose book Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism I read and recommended last year) that a serious conversation should leave you exhausted from intense listening.

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Have a great weekend.